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This chapter offers an interpretation of British regional civil defence activities in the 1950s. I argue that the persistent social impact of nationwide sociotechnical imaginaries of nuclear weapons cannot be fully understood without considering the localised social, geographical and discursive contexts in which civil defence was located and enacted. This chapter traces the ways in which a wider (officially maintained) sociotechnical imaginary appears to have been embedded in and intertwined with these localised contexts. After discussing the bespoke narrative scenarios created to frame civil defence exercises and offering analysis of their public representation, I focus on sites of leisure and forms of civic engagement linked to civil defence activity. Lastly, I turn to imaginative geographies to explore how sociotechnical imaginaries became localised in this era.

The introduction to the volume lays out the rationale and ambitions of the book, delineates its chronological and geographical focus and situates it in the existing historiography of civil defence. One central ambition is to advance civil defence history by attuning it more explicitly to the study of science and technology and to pave the way for transnational and comparative efforts. We do so in two steps. We introduce and explore the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries developed by Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun Kim, before applying and adjusting it to civil defence history. Finally, the introduction provides a brief overview of the chapters in the volume.